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It was allegedly 2012, according to an anonymous defector, and Danny Glover was reportedly present. Glover had previously taken a similar amount of money from Chavez in 2007, and we can confirm he was in Venezuela as an “election monitor” in October 2012.

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https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-venezuela-supporting-radical-left-wing-groups-the-us

Oct 29, 2025 7 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Mike Gonzalez
@Gundisalvus
Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow

Mike is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

. . .Venezuela played more than a supportive role in this attempt. Last week, I spoke with a former senior Venezuelan official who was very close to the dead dictator Hugo Chavez and who has now defected. He told me he was in the room in late 2012 when Chavez gave Opal Tometi—who the following year helped to found BLM—suitcases stuffed with dollars.

“Chavez ordered his people to hand the suitcases to them, suitcases filled with dollars, at least $20 million,” the defector told me, adding that Tometi was accompanied by three other African American women and the actor Danny Glover, a huge supporter of the Marxist regimes in Venezuela and Cuba. “Chavez told them that the money was to project the Bolivarian revolutionary project on U.S. streets,” he said, using Chavez’s term for Venezuelan Marxism.

The defector, who is cooperating with and providing evidence to the U.S. government on other subjects, particularly the close connection between the Cartel de los Soles narco group and the Venezuelan state, spoke with great specificity. “I see them all very clearly. The meeting took place at the Miraflores presidential palace, in a huge suite called the Japanese suite, where private meetings are held.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/21/film.venezuela

Venezuela giving Danny Glover $18m to direct film on epic slave revolt
· Chávez hopes venture will aid anti-imperialist fight
· Actor wants to educate US on Toussaint Louverture

Rory Carroll in Caracas
Sun 20 May 2007 21.14 EDT

Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression.

The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover’s biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.

It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism.

Glover, 60, who starred with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and more recently with Eddie Murphy in the film DreamGirls, is a civil rights activist and supporter of Mr Chávez’s radical leftwing policies.

A document from the congress’s finance commission said the culture ministry would be a partner with Glover and give $17.8m for “scripts, production costs, wardrobe, lighting, transport, makeup and the creation of the whole creative and administrative platform”.

The project could mark a breakthrough for Villa del Cine, a new government-funded studio outside the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, which is part of Mr Chávez’s effort to combat what he sees as American cultural hegemony.

Glover, who visited Caracas at the weekend, told the Guardian that he would direct the film, titled Toussaint. “It’s so advanced that you can taste it. We’ve scouted locations within 75km [45 miles] of Caracas. I can do everything I need to do with this film from here.” He said he had been in talks with the government, but was unaware that a decision had been made until journalists tipped him off about the congress’s announcement. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.

He suggested that there was still some uncertainty over whether the venture would go ahead. “One of the major axioms in theatre is never talk about anything until the deal is signed. There’s a lot of deliberation that goes on before something actually happens.”

It appeared that the congress timed the announcement to coincide with a media conference in Caracas hosted by the television network Telesur, a Venezuela-funded regional answer to CNN. Glover is on the board. . .

The actor is chairman of the TransAfrica Forum, an advocacy group for African Americans and other members of Africa’s diaspora, and a vocal critic of the Bush administration. Along with the singer Harry Belafonte, Glover is the best known celebrity supporter of Mr Chávez, whom he considers “remarkable”. He is a regular visitor to Venezuela.

Venezuela’s congress, which consists entirely of Chávez supporters, also said it would give $1.8m to develop a screen treatment of The General in His Labyrinth, by a Venezuela-born director, Alberto Arvelo. Some rate Gabriel García Márquez’s account of the final days of Bolívar along with the Colombian writer’s better known novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

To build consciousness of what Mr Chávez calls “21st-century socialism”, the government has funded nationwide screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s classic film Modern Times, about the exploitation of US factory workers during the depression.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/9/danny_glover_record_venezuela_turnout_hands

Danny Glover: Record Venezuela Turnout Hands Chávez Convincing Mandate to Continue Social Agenda
StoryOctober 09, 2012

This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today.
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Topics
Latin America
Venezuela
Guests
Danny Glover
American actor, film director and political activist. He has been in Venezuela as an electoral monitor. He joins us now from Caracas.
Links
Follow Danny Glover on Twitter: @MrDannyGlover
“The Americas Blog” by the Center for Economic and Policy Research
Vea/Lea en español

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has won his fourth presidential election in a race seen as his strongest challenge yet. With a historic turnout of 80 percent, Chávez took 54 percent of the vote, besting challenger Henrique Capriles’s 44.9 percent. We go to Caracas to speak with actor and activist Danny Glover, who traveled to Venezuela to monitor the election. Addressing the record turnout and the wide support for Chávez’s anti-poverty program, even among members of the opposition, Glover predicts that “we may find that certainly President Chávez and those [other Latin American leaders] who are re-elected will really create a new page in this history of this region.” [includes rush transcript]

. . .Media Options
This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today.
Donate
Topics
Latin America
Venezuela
Guests
Danny Glover
American actor, film director and political activist. He has been in Venezuela as an electoral monitor. He joins us now from Caracas.
Links
Follow Danny Glover on Twitter: @MrDannyGlover
“The Americas Blog” by the Center for Economic and Policy Research
Vea/Lea en español

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are on the road on a 100-city tour in Durango, Colorado. But first we turn to Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez has won his fourth presidential election, defeating challenger Henrique Capriles in a race widely seen as Chávez’s strongest challenge since his first victory in 1998. Chávez won 54 percent of the vote, with Capriles gaining just under 45 percent.

Tens of thousands celebrated in the streets of the capital Caracas after the results were announced. Chávez held a replica of the sword of independence hero Simón Bolívar during the victory celebration. At a rally outside the presidential palace, Chávez reached out to the political opposition and called for unity among Venezuelans.

PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ: [translated] To those who promote hate, to those who promote social poison, to those who are always trying to deny all the good things that happen in Venezuela, I invite them to dialogue, to debate and to work together for Venezuela, for the Bolivarian people, for the Bolivarian Venezuela. That’s why I start by sending these greetings to them and extending these two hands and heart to them in the name of all of us, because we are brothers in the fatherland of Bolívar.

AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, speaking after winning another six-year term in office. In his concession speech later Sunday night, Capriles urged Chávez to recognize the voices of those who voted against him.

HENRIQUE CAPRILES: [translated] I hope a political movement that has been in power for 14 years understands that almost half the country does not agree with it. I ask those who remain in power for respect, consideration and recognition of almost half the country.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the significance of Chávez’s victory, we go to Caracas to speak with Danny Glover, American actor, film director, political activist. He’s been in Venezuela as an electoral monitor.

Danny Glover, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you tell us what you have observed in this fourth election of President Chávez?

DANNY GLOVER: Well, thank you, first of all, for having me on the show, Amy.

I had the opportunity to witness something very extraordinary in this hemisphere, and certainly in Venezuela: an election that was very clean, an election that—where the people had—were greatly enthusiastic on both sides about the prospect of another six years. And I witnessed—I went from polling stations, several polling stations, and talked to people, and through an interpreter, about what they felt about the voting process itself.

And the voting process is very, very meticulous and at the same time very thorough, in that you began with your voting card, then a fingerprint, then you vote. And then all of that is vetted through another process, including a mark on your hand, your thumb, a purple mark on your hand. So I witnessed this, and with the incredible enthusiasm around the polls.

And it’s on Sunday now. It takes place on Sunday, when there’s not a great deal of traffic on the street, and people voted to this or that. And they don’t sell liquor on Sunday as a result of the voting process, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Danny Glover, why did you go down to Venezuela? And talk about where you have spent your time.

DANNY GLOVER: Well, the first thing that—the reason I came, I was invited by the electoral commission to come here and be an accompaniment or a monitor. But my relationship with Venezuela has been one in which—it’s been over the last eight years, and even further than that, at the World Conference on Racism in 2001. I’ve been meeting African descendants in the region and had great discussions with them about the changes that were happening in the region and promoting more democracy, and perhaps understanding their own involvement. So, through TransAfrica Forum, we began to form these relationships, develop these relationships, which culminated in me coming to Venezuela in 2004, meeting with the Venezuelan Afro-descendancy groups there, and also meeting with the president. The president—certainly President Chávez expressed his—certainly expressed that they had not included within the 1999 constitution—looked out for—took into consideration the aspirations of Afro-descendants and, since then, has promoted programs in which they’ve improved the lives of Afro-descendants.

Well, during the day, we certainly—the day of the election, Sunday, we spent time here in Caracas. Then Monday, we went to the community of Barlovento, which is in Miranda state, was in Capriles’s—where he’s the governor of, the opposition leader is the governor of. We spent time talking to people and really understanding the real narrative around what this election means to people, poor people, people who have been affected by the changes that had happened in the—during the time of this regime, people who have been affected by the changes that have happened over the last 13 years. We—to people who talked about increased healthcare access, also increased education, also the building of co-operatives around chocolate, first of all, and also around bananas. And all of them expressed a sense of pride, a sense of also relief that President Chávez had been re-elected. . .

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https://en.panampost.com/panam-staff/2020/06/23/the-links-between-black-lives-matter-and-nicolas-maduro-revealed/

The Links Between Black Lives Matter and Nicolas Maduro Revealed
by PanAm Post Staff June 23, 2020

. . .In December 2015 Black Lives Matter sent a delegation, headed by the organization’s co-founder, Opal Tometi, to act as observers during the Venezuelan Parliamentary elections of that year. The Maduro regime did not allow accreditation for observers from the Organization of American States, the UN, or the EU. The only accredited observers where from regimes and organizations friendly to the “revolutionary cause.”

Later that same month Tometi penned an article where she espouses, word for word, the regime’s standard text for international propaganda. “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world ,” wrote Tometi about one of the world’s most corrupt voting systems in history.

Earlier in 2015 Maduro was given an award at the “Afro-descendants Summit” held in Harlem. Maduro was invited at the behest of the Black Lives Matter leadership.

Scores of Venezuelans have been killed, not while resisting arrest, or while scuffling with the police in demonstrations, but by police snipers under orders to quell demonstrations by providing a few corpses. The best-known case is of former beauty queen, Genesis Carmona, killed by Maduro’s snipers in 2013, two years before Tometi publicly declared her deep admiration for Maduro and his regime.

Reading Tometi’s piece, while remembering the atrocities and inhuman conditions suffered by the Venezuelan people, superbly reported in The New York Times by Meredith Kohut, one realizes that it is not racism that the co-founder of BLM is fighting. This level of cynicism is always a sign of a fanatical adherence to an ideology.

In the case of Black Lives Matter, both its co-founders are fanatical Marxists, and they have publicly admitted as much. Patrice Cullors, Tometi’s colleague in the founding of Black Lives Matter, has publicly admitted to being “a trained Marxist” and “we are super-versed in ideological theory”. . .

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https://keywiki.org/Opal_Tometi

Supporting Maduro
Opal Tometi, hugged Nicolas Maduro at the 2015 People of African Descent Leadership Summit in Harlem, New York, where several high-rank officials of the Venezuelan regime also participated. Maduro, currently banned from the United States, was in town for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

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Tometi appears alongside Maduro on a Venezuelan government propaganda site’s news report from the event, raising a fist and embracing him. The photo appears to be taken in front of a giant photo of Maduro’s face.

Tometi spoke at the summit, standing in front of a Venezuelan flag for the speech and thanking Maduro’s government for the opportunity. Among her targets during the speech were the government of the Dominican Republic for deporting Haitians and “Western economic policies, land grabs, and neocolonial financial instruments like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund” for, she argued, creating the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

“I am aware that justice also has to do with racial aspects,” assured Tometi, according to Venezuelan state media. “What we are experiencing is the manifestation of anti-black racism and this is state violence. It must be called by its name. Police brutality, the murders of blacks, violence against the Afro-descendant community, all is proof of the violence of the State,” said the Black Lives Matter founder.

Tometi also quoted Joanne Chesimard, a radical Marxist convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 who has lived for decades as a fugitive in Cuba, as urging, “you must fight until all black lives matter.” Tometi referred to Chesimard, who renamed herself “Assata Shakur,” as the summit’s “dear exiled sister.”

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In addition to meeting with and applauding Maduro at the New York summit, Tometi also served as an election observer in socialist Venezuela during the 2015 legislative elections. She praised the socialist dictatorship as “a place where there is intelligent political discourse” on Twitter during one of the bloodiest years of police brutality in the country.

Tometi also applauded Venezuela in an article that year stating, “in these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”[5